May 7, 2001
FAMILY MATTERS:
Dream of God's creativity in simple lives
___My son soon will graduate from college. He is a bright, committed young man whose faith is the central focus of his life. He does not feel called into full-time ministry, but he wants to have a ministry through his work. How can I encourage him? I know it is a frightening time for him.
MARY STEDHAM
Family Counselor
Abilene
___You are right. Times of such uncertainty do carry with them anxiety. Fortunately, they also carry energy and excitement that we long for.
___Dare we dream--and encourage our children to dream--of God creating things through our simple lives and the gifts that have been entrusted to us that can be "breathtaking"? I hope we do. I hope we remind them Jesus used simple people in their own day-to-day worlds to transform the world. And it was done using what they did have, not what they didn't have.
___Too often, we get caught in our own limitations, fully forgetting that our ways are not God's ways and our limits are not God's limits. Robert Schuller has said, "Be sure your dreams are big enough for God to fit into them." Sadly, we get that turned around and create a God who is small enough to fit into our limited view. In the process, we "rob God," and we rob ourselves of the possibilities God could accomplish through our ordinary lives.
___What may be sadder still is that we rob our children of their excitement and even of their passion as we try to protect them from disappointment or discomfort. We coach them away from those things that appear risky and uncertain. We tell them to realize they can't do it all and to choose carefully, but we forget to tell them we have tried to do it all, refusing to narrow our focus and consequently losing our own "passion."
___How grateful we should be that Saul of Tarsus never lost his passion! The determination of Saul the persecutor carried forward into the life of Paul the apostle. Paul really didn't have to understand all of his calling in life at the beginning. God took the nature he had and showed him a better way to know God.
___That is what Saul had been seeking. How fortunate God granted the "new man," Paul, the ongoing passion to share his own life-changing experience, regardless of the risks.
___Only then did Paul grow into an apostle who could boldly proclaim, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!"
___And your son can, too. Be sure that you tell him that!
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